Untitled by Ash Kitchen

Untitled

The paintings of Ash Kitchen are abundant in delicacy yet purposefully alluring. Although sharing the same neutral, understated palette and fluid brushstrokes indicative of Michaël Borremans the paintings enact an entirely different focus somewhat more aligned to the pop artists of the 1950s. Indeed, Kitchen is interested in drawing parallels between the world of fine art and the world of popular culture. Refuting traditional painting motifs, Kitchen exploits the similarities between the two worlds and explicitly reveals the pulsing energy of material culture. Kitchen uses fashion and glossy magazines as a reference point, and the work echoes Richard Hamilton’s belief that the artist (to retain their unique purpose), ‘may have to plunder the popular arts to recover the imagery which is his rightful inheritance.’ The work of Kitchen goes further, however, exploring the pleasure of material culture, and the rich, often paradoxical, sentiments that drive human nature.